The Price
by Taywen
Summary: Because Lanie Kalei had a family, and dreams, before she became just another District Six morphling. *Written for Starvation Forum's August prompt: Sacrifice.*


Disclaimer: Hunger Games does not in any way belong to me, it's the property of Suzanne Collins, etc.

Written for Starvation Forum's August prompt, '**Sacrifice**'.

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><p><strong>The Price<strong>

Laurence Kalei smiles grimly. Impossibly (no, improbably) he and his younger sister Lanie have survived to the final two. After a fierce battle with the last Career, it's just himself and Lanie left.

(He was training to be a doctor; this was his last year of reaping eligibility, and he was going to become a doctor after he graduated from school in a few short weeks.

Instead, he stepped forward and volunteered after his sister was reaped.

Some things are more important than others; sacrifices have to be made.)

Soon, it will just be Lanie left. He knows how these things work, knows that the septic fluid from his intestines is seeping into his body, and it's nearly impossible to survive a stomach wound of this magnitude, assuming the blood loss doesn't kill him first.

(Because while Laurence trained to save lives, the Careers trained to take them.)

Laurence thinks that the only one who doesn't know how this is going to end is Lanie herself. He'd asked her to take his life – finish me off, Lanie – but she had refused, her tear-bright eyes wide with fear and denial.

Dimly, Laurence can hear Lanie begging the sky to send some medicine, please, can't you see he's dying?

(That was always the plan, though. He'd told her as much, but Lanie shook her head and cried and Laurence didn't bring it up after the train arrived in the Capitol.)

She isn't paying very much attention to him; it's easy to raise the blood-stained knife to his own throat. Laurence knows the most efficient way to kill a person, courtesy of his medical training. Lanie turns to him, a look of horror in her eyes and he spares a moment to regret that she has to see this (but she will live, and that is what matters).

Laurence slits his own throat, and the last thing he sees is his sister's tear-stained features; the last thing he hears is her scream; the last thing he feels is her hands on his throat, vainly attempting to staunch the gaping wound.

(His smile tastes like blood.)

xx

Lanie Kalei smiles shakily. Her lips are bitten red, but her perpetually-stoned mentor sobered up long enough to slur _smile for the cameras, stupid girl_ and since it's the first piece of advice the man bothered to give her, Lanie thinks that she should follow it.

The post-Games recap is awful. As if it's not enough to relive Laurence's suicide every. single. time. she closes her eyes, she has to watch him slit his throat in high-definition and have her reaction filmed for the nation to see.

(Laurence was the one who should have come out of that arena. He was the Kalei that was going places; he was going to become a doctor, and help their family out of poverty. Lanie was just the dreamer of an artist, scorned by her parents.

Actually, Laurence should not have been in the arena at all. He volunteered for Lanie's sake and it's all. her. fault.)

Lanie nearly bites through her lip, but she can't look away from the screen. Laurence's bloody and mangled form is replaced by her gangly, scrawny one. She looks like a tomboy, with her close-cropped brown hair and boyish outfit.

(Her stylist put her in a blue dress that was the same shade as Laurence's eyes and she threw up all over it.)

It's obvious to everybody who should have come out of the arena, and everyone knows it's not Lanie.

Caesar Flickerman continues his attempt to interview her, but Lanie just shakes and shakes and shakes. Her tongue stumbles over her words, and her hands tremble so that she almost drops the crown President Snow hands her and her entire slim frame shudders like a leaf.

Flickerman directs her to bow to the audience.

(Like an actor on a stage, thanking them for their applause.)

Lanie doesn't want to thank them; she isn't grateful that they seem to be fine with the fact that Laurence killed himself so she could win. Lanie doesn't deserve applause. She deserves to _die_.

(But Laurence killed others and himself for her, becoming the complete opposite of everything he strove for, so Lanie thinks that she can honour his sacrifice and do what he could not: preserve a life, even if it's such an unworthy one as her own.)

Her mentor presses a syringe of morphling into her hand on the eve of her Victory Tour. The slightly cloudy fluid disappears into her arm, leaving only a small red dot where the needle slipped into her skin.

Lanie doesn't shake at all, and she sleeps through the night on the train that takes her to District Twelve.

(_Morphling is an awful drug_, Laurence told her one night, when he stayed up late studying and she stayed up late drawing. His voice was quiet because of the cheap, thin wall separating the room the siblings shared from their parents' room. _Promise me you'll never take it unless you have to, for pain relief. Promise me you won't abuse it, Lanie._

Lanie promised.)

Her smile is wide and her eyes are empty and Lanie doesn't think about broken promises or dead brothers.

(She doesn't feel any pain and it's. so. glorious.)

xx

President Snow smiles predatorily as he outlines Lanie's future as little more than a prostitute for the Capitol's elite. At first, Lanie's expression is slack and unfocused; as he continues to speak, smile unfaltering, her face becomes fearful and her eyes dart about as if she can find a way to escape what Coriolanus is telling her.

(Obviously Edmund Thomas was looking to have his former tribute follow in his footsteps. District Six did not produce many Victors, and it seemed like the majority of them were destined to become morphling addicts. Lanie was not quite as far gone as Edmund, though.)

Laurence Kalei thought he was sacrificing himself for his sister. But with his death, he just joined the ranks of poor, ignorant lambs slaughtered at the altar of the Hunger Games. He left Lanie alone, probably thinking that she would have a good life of wealth and prosperity.

(If Laurence Kalei was sacrificed for the Capitol's wrath, Lanie Kalei will be sacrificed for the Capitol's lust and greed.)

Coriolanus smiles, his tongue long since deadened to the perpetual taste of blood in his mouth.

(To him, it just tastes like victory.)

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><p>AN: I don't even feel like this really goes with the prompt, for all the times that I threw around (abused) the word 'sacrifice' in this fic.

And it seems like filling Starvation's prompts is just an excuse to write angst. One day I will write something happy for the Hunger Games. One day.

(Who am I kidding.)

Feedback would be lovely.


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